Report Failed Usage

Find usage the marketplace rejected, understand why, and get it billed.

What Report Failed means

Fours validates usage when it arrives, then sends it to the marketplace in an hourly report (see Reporting late usage). Report Failed means Fours accepted the usage, but the marketplace rejected the hourly report that carried it. The usage is not billed.

Most of these rejections come from the buyer’s account on the marketplace, not from your integration: the buyer’s subscription, license, or billing is not in a state the marketplace can charge. Your request to Fours succeeded, so the API response gives no sign of the failure.

A Report Failed record stays failed. Fours does not send it again until you retry it.

Find failed reports

In the console

1. Open Usage Metering in the left menu. It opens on Received Usages.
2. Set Status to Report Failed, and widen the date range in the same row if you need to (the last 7 days by default).
3. Hover a row’s red Report Failed status. For the errors listed under Common errors, the tooltip names the cause and the next step.

To fetch the same records from your backend, call List Usage Record Groups with status set to REPORT_FAILED.

With a webhook

Each time a marketplace rejects a report, Fours sends a METER event for the entitlement to your webhook. Its message names the marketplace and the error:

{
  "organizationID": "your-suger-org-id",
  "partner": "AWS",
  "action": "METER",
  "entityType": "ENTITLEMENT",
  "entityID": "your-suger-entitlement-id",
  "message": "AWS marketplace usage metering failed: CustomerNotSubscribed"
}

The payload above is trimmed; the event also carries the entitlement under info. It repeats on every hourly report that fails, so expect more than one per entitlement until the cause is fixed.

With a daily email

Switch on the Abnormal Alert Usage Record Group scope (ABNORMAL_ALERT.USAGE_RECORD_GROUP) in Email Notification. Once a day, Fours emails the recipients you set a count of the usage records, received between 7 days and 2 hours earlier, that are still Created, Report Pending, or Report Failed on active entitlements, with the entitlements they belong to.

Common errors

The error is the marketplace’s own code. Each section below links to the marketplace’s documentation for it.

AWS: CustomerNotSubscribed

What it means: AWS will not accept usage for this customer on this product. AWS gives three causes: the customer identifier is invalid, the customer has no active agreement or subscription for the product, or the customer’s AWS account is suspended. Further usage for the customer fails until it subscribes again.

What to do: Confirm the subscription with the buyer. If they unsubscribed, stop reporting usage for the entitlement. If the agreement is still active in AWS Marketplace, open a case with AWS Marketplace Seller Operations.

Reference: AWS UsageRecordResult status

AWS: InvalidLicenseException

What it means: AWS rejected the license behind the entitlement.

What to do: AWS returns this error unless three things hold: the license (LicenseArn) is valid, it matches the customer the usage is reported for, and the usage falls within the license’s activation period. Check that the usage belongs to this buyer and that its timestamp is inside the period the buyer is entitled for. The license itself is the buyer’s — it appears under Granted licenses in their AWS License Manager — so ask the buyer to confirm it is active. If it is not active while the agreement is, open a case with AWS asking why.

Reference: AWS BatchMeterUsage errors

Azure: ResourceNotActive

What it means: The buyer’s SaaS subscription is not in a billable state, for example still pending activation, suspended, or unsubscribed. Fours records this error as Resource not active.

What to do: Check the subscription in Partner Center. Usage cannot be billed until the buyer completes or resumes it. If it shows as active there, open an Azure support case to confirm whether the buyer is in a billable state.

Reference: Microsoft marketplace metering service APIs · SaaS subscription lifecycle

GCP: BILLING_DISABLED

What it means: Billing is disabled on the buyer’s Google Cloud account, so Google refuses usage for it.

What to do: Ask the buyer to re-enable billing on the account behind the entitlement. Usage reported while billing is disabled cannot be billed.

Reference: Google Service Control services.check

Retry a failed report

Once the cause is fixed, send the usage again:

• From the console: click the green Retry arrow in the row’s Action column.
• From the API: call Retry Usage Record Group with the record’s ID.

Retrying sets the record back to Created, and the next hourly report includes it. If the marketplace rejects it again, it returns to Report Failed.

Related

• Usage Metering — reporting usage from the console or the API, and the validation Fours runs before a report.
• Webhook — creating a webhook and verifying its signature.
• Email Notification — turning on scopes and choosing recipients.